Their voice, their height and their composure are just the same. Their wives too are identical twins from the same family. You possibly can’t differentiate Taiwo Oluwafunso from Kehinde Oluwafunso if they both stand on a podium.
Kehinde Oluwafunso however is an evangelist, a prophet and a teacher of the Bible. Taiwo, his twin brother is not any of those. But they complement each other in an amazing way.
While Kehinde stays on the altar preaching, Taiwo helps with logistics and finds pleasure in introducing his twin brother as an evangelist.
But Kehinde’s journey into ministry was more like an evolution of God’s gift in his life. He said while growing up, he just had this natural penchant to stay indoors, pray and study the word. His twin brother, though a fine Christian is more of a logistics person and the outgoing type.
Kehinde’s experiment in ministry began in his growing up days when God used him to heal the sick and meet the spiritual needs of people around him. He recalled in a recent session with Church Times how he once prayed for his sick mother and she got up from the sick bed almost immediately. That experience and several others made his parents encourage him to horn the gift God deposited in him.
His desire to know more of God led him to the Word of Faith Bible Institute run by Living Faith Church a.k.a Winners Chapel. In WOFBI, Kehinde said he met people who had a similar passion. He was exposed to a lot of things about ministry in WOFBI. He recalled how he went into seclusion praying and interceding with other like minds during the training period.
After the WOFBI experience, he had wanted to join the workforce of any ministry; he was thinking of Winners Chapel or the Redeemed Christian Church of God. But God did not allow him. Rather, God asked him to start a fresh work.
The work in Badagry
And he was to start the work in a rather strange place. “One night I began to hear Badagry. God kept telling me Badagry. God asked me to go and start a church in Badagry. That was in 2009. The following Sunday morning I told my twin brother that God asked me to go to Badagry. I did not hesitate. I took a trip to Badagry from where we lived at Ipaja before we later moved to Airport Road.
“I got to the last bus stop at Badagry and approached a man managing a car wash business and I said to him God asked me to come to start a church in Badagry. The man was initially taken aback at the same time excited that a man could leave the heart of Lagos and come to Badagry to start a church. He gladly gave me a place close to the car wash site to start the proposed ministry which we called Discovery Word Ministry.”
That was how his ministry took off. He would go to Badagry on Friday, do evangelism and wait till Sunday for church service. He was doing that every weekend. He was able to gather some people. But he did not encourage his wife to join him because of the distance.
The church in Badagry was growing and he was beginning to have dreams of leaving the car wash site and take a space in a shopping mall that was just being constructed in Badagry. As he stood before the shopping mall one evening contemplating how to take the place, he heard God say to him that his time in Badagry was up.
“God told me I was no longer going to stay in Badagry. I was baffled. He said he had tested me; that I could now come to Lagos. He said he wanted to test my obedience and that was why he asked me to go to Badagry.”
Kehinde: How I hear from God
But then, how does one hear God so clearly and so distinctively? “You can hear God’s voice in the midst of other voices. The first thing is to wait on the Lord. If one does not wait on God, one may miss it. Then you must over time learn how He talks with you. But what is more important is the kind of relationship you have with him.”
While declaring that he felt bad that God asked him to leave Badagry; despite his labour there, he said he had to begin another round of waiting on God for the next line of action.
“The pressure was much on me to start another church when I was waiting on God. But the Lord said I should not. But that I should just hold a monthly meeting. So, we continued with Discovery Word Ministry in 2014. But we meet once a month as instructed by God to share the word of God, pray and generally have fellowship. People come from as far as Ilorin, Sango, Badagry for the monthly programme”
Beyond that, however, he did not stress himself with the issue of getting drums and musical instruments for the monthly meeting which first took off at Adeniyi Jones before it moved to Allen. He did not have to even invite instrumentalists because he was aware of how some of them frustrate church meetings.
Rather, worshippers who come for the meetings made use of their hands. They were clapping and singing during their fellowship days without the drums and hysteria. Yet, the power of God was mighty in their midst. “Instrumentalist had to come and beg us to minister after we have had several meetings,” he recalled.
My communion with God
Kehinde who runs Twins Action Aids International, a non-governmental organisation that brings twins and their likes together, along with his twin brother, says he does not joke with his personal fellowship with God.
“There must be a constant communion with heaven as a minister of God. It is in the midst of this communion that God will make us have the light. There is nobody that is a healing evangelist or deliverance minister just like that. It is in our ability to learn and wait at his feet that these gifts manifest. I never knew I would conduct deliverance for people until I saw myself doing it,” he said.
He says he has had to pray for strange people in strange places noting however that God has been faithful. Still, on hearing from God, he said, “It’s like our biological father. If you don’t love your father, you may not like his voice. In our relationship with God, there is always testing. God must have tested us to begin to speak to us.
“God will not speak to a sheep that is disobedient. I hear the voice of God. When God called me, he called me by my name. If God talks to us regularly, there is a kind of familiarity.”
He however warned that people who hear God’s voice regularly must not take that relationship for granted recalling that he once did, but quickly had to retrace his steps
“I have seen God in His majesty in a vision, I have seen angels, I have seen demons. I have seen colours that I have never seen in my life.” He stated; wondering why God chose to show him these things.
He explains further that, “spiritual things are delicate. That is why God trains us. Only those who are ready to take discipline benefit from God. His rod and staff comfort us. When God scolds us, we should see it as a thing of joy. There is a period of developing our spiritual gifts and period of horning those gifts.”
Giving a rundown of his ministry involvement with people, he says he has found himself ministering to a lot of women in his ministry a development he says has made him more careful.
Sexual temptations: Why pastors fall
Many pastors according to him fall into sexual temptations because the people they minister to are at their lowest point especially when it is one-on-one counselling. “if they are not disciplined and careful, they would fall.”
He confessed that many women have thrown baits at him but that God saved him from falling on their laps. He recalled an occasion when he went to minister in Abuja and his hotel room was invaded by a strange lady.
“That experience was one I cannot forget. It was as if my wife had known what would happen. She advised me not to go to the programme. But I said since I had given my word, it won’t be nice to disappoint those who invited me.
“True to her fears, something strange happened in the hotel room I lodged. A strange lady came to the room in the guise of staff of the hotel. But as God would have it, I was able to ward off the temptation.
“Women have sent me blue films; I deleted them. I tell my wife about these things and that is what has been helping me to stay away from their offers. If you are called and you don’t have the training of self-control and discipline, you are in trouble.
“When God calls you there are some surgical works he has to do in your life. He has to kill some inordinate ambition and lust. I went to minister to a lady, she removed her cloth and invited me to come and suck her breasts. I ran away. Self-disciple and self-control. I swore to my own risk. A servant of God must learn to kill the lust of the flesh. I said to God, the day I attempt to go and meet a lady for sex, let a vehicle hit me and let me die. When I remember that, I stay on my lane”
While noting that a lot of ladies come to the monthly worship centre, he said “God has helped us to stave off temptation. Sexual temptation is so strong that people leave prayer mountain to go and commit adultery. If God has called us, we must be people of vision and goals. If we obey God, he will lift up a standard against the raging storm of the enemy. But we need self-disciple.”
Kehinde Oluwafunso: My family is my ministry
His twin brother according to him has been of tremendous support and help. “He carries chairs in our ministry. He comes before me for prayers. He is outgoing and engages more with the public than I do.”
Kehinde spends 95 per cent of his time in ministry while 5 per cent is for the tourism business that is being run along with his twin brother under the auspices of Twins Action Aid International.
He said the NGO has helped in a lot of ways to establish his ministry. “We have had a lot of ladies in the NGO but to the glory of God, neither I nor my twin brother has taken any of the ladies in the NGO to bed. We have not taken people’s money either. We have trials and temptations in the NGO which God have used to train us.
He avers that “it is possible to live a clean life and I am an example. I will do anything to pay the price. God will help us when we are willing. We must have knowledge of who we are in God. There will be battles and contentions but he has given us the power to subdue the powers of darkness.”
He pays tribute to his wife describing her as the greatest support apart from God. “My family is my ministry. I minister to people till 1.30 a.m sometimes and my wife has never doubted me for once. She has a lot of trust in me. That has kept the ministry going” He quipped.
Message for Nigeria
Kehinde who claimed to have received several messages concerning Nigeria for 2021 said God told him that people should be encouraged to go into farming because He would bless farmers this year.
He says, “the lives of leading religious figures will also be threatened. There will also be a raging locust at an epidemic level. But through prayers, it can be averted. 2021 will be a critical period for Aso Rock.”
Kehinde says he has not been bothered about what people say whenever it concerns God. “I tell people what He tells me and I forget it. It will take the grace of God for the northeast not to be wiped off. Terrorism will take a new turn. Sexual sins and corruption will attract great punishment from God. Cyclone will happen in Africa perhaps for the first time.” He declared.
The vision of heaven and hell
He recalled how he saw a vision of heaven and hell and the great things God showed him in 2017. “I saw myself in the midst of three mighty angels with pillars of fire. They are no-nonsense angels. I tried to lift up my eyes but I could not.
I heard the voice of the Lord say to me that it is the prayer of the saints that keeps the pillar of fire burning. In the vision, God made me realise that pastors will give account of the souls in their custody. The Lord warned me in that revelation saying we are in the final lap before His coming.
While promising to publish a comprehensive book on his heaven encounters, he said, “Heaven is real. I saw my father in that heavenly encounter. His tribal marks had disappeared. I saw crowns but the Holy Spirit told me in that vision to go back to the world and engage in more works of faith so as to enhance my reward in heaven.”
Story by Gbenga Osinaike
